Alex Rutledge Series by Tom Corcoran
Alex Rutledge #1
Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery
Tom Corcoran
A pleasant Key West Sunday in January turns into a tropical nightmare. It's early. The tourists are still asleep. Freelance and part-time crime photographer Alex Rutledge bicycles near-vacant streets, taking pictures for his own enjoyment. But he's challenged at a restoration district construction site, accused by a developer of snapping photos for an expose. An hour later, the city police request Rutledge's forensic photo expertise. A murder victim has been found - at the same work site. Detective Dexter Hayes, Jr., is caustic and inept, and Rutledge is dismissed before he completes his work. An hour later, the county sheriff, Chicken Neck Liska, asks Alex to photograph another murder victim, this time on nearby Stock Island. Rutledge soon suspects that the murders are linked - illogically, through him. He can't divulge the link to his lover, Teresa Barga, for fear of compromising her police media liaison job. Alex questions the detective's blundering, while the cops begin to link him to the crimes. A powerful real estate broker offers Rutledge an odd, lucrative job. Friends are threatened. He and Teresa dodge gunshots. Yet there is no identifiable antagonist, no motive, no reason for Rutledge to be a hub for evil. To protect himself and his friends, to avoid arrest - unsuccessfully, at first - he must scratch for information on an island where few tell the truth. At the core of Bone Island Mambo is betrayal, retribution, and revenge. The plot twists in surprising directions, and Corcoran's characters are true characters, never as laid-back as they first appear. Visit Key West, and hang on for dear life. **
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Alex Rutledge #2
Air Dance Iguana
Tom Corcoran
Two men, twenty miles apart, are killed in the same strange way on a quiet summer morning in the Florida Keys. Forensic photographer Alex Rutledge finds that he may be the only person interested in pursuing justice, especially when his brother becomes a key suspect.Alex connects the current-day murders to a thirty-year-old scam amidst revenge smoldering since the Nixon years. He races time to thwart a final killing and, if possible, to prove his brother's innocence.Tom Corcoran once again delivers a deftly plotted and gripping mystery with all of the flavor and intrigue that Key West can offer. Review"The reading highlight of the year."--Michael Connelly, author of The Closers** "Tom Corcoran and his hard-ass protagonist are destined to become national treasures."--Randy Wayne White, author of Dead of Night, Tampa Burn, and Everglades"Tom Corcoran has put his time on the water to great use. [He] reconnects my heart and brain to the Key West I knew."--Jimmy Buffett"Vividly portraying the Key West scene, Tom Corcoran has created a wild cast of characters who are a welcome addition to the Alex Rutledge series." --Dallas Morning News "A fast-paced read with a complex but well-told plot, Corcoran's latest will take you to Margaritaville without wasting away your time." --Richmond Times-Dispatch From the Back CoverSOME WOUNDS NEVER HEALLately, Key West is not quite the laid back place that occasional freelance crime-scene-photographer Alex Rutledge prefers. It's bad enough that the discovery of two dead ex-Navy men one morning?both found swinging on boat lifts twenty miles apart?means grisly work at the indecent hour of 7AM. It's worse that Alex's run-in with a chest-thumping new deputy turns out to have ominous consequences when his wayward younger brother turns up in town...and becomes the prime suspect. SOME PROMISES SHOULD NEVER BE MADEAlex knows Tim has messed up his life, but he just can't believe his brother isn't a killer. As Alex digs deeper, he starts to make connections the cops have missed?but he's baffled when he finds one of the deceased owns a picture of a young girl who turned to Alex for help many years ago. And when a third man is found swinging on the docks, he knows time is running out for his brother. But what he doesn't know is that facing the killer may turn out to be the least of his problems... "Tom Corcoran and his hard-ass protagonist are destined to become national treasures."?Randy Wayne White, author of Dead of Night, Tampa Burn, and *Everglades*"Tom Corcoran has put his time on the water to great use. [He] reconnects my heart and brain to the Key West I knew."?Jimmy Buffett
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Alex Rutledge #3
Gumbo Limbo
Tom Corcoran
Alex Rutledge, freelance and part-time Key West crime scene photographer, awakes to his first day off in months. Late August, the off-season, the dog days. Everything's okay until his phone rings. His old navy buddy, Zack Cahill, now a successful Chicago banker, is in town and, at 8:00 a.m., drunk in Sloppy Joe's. Zack demands that Rutledge join him for a celebratory beer. When Alex arrives at the bar, eight minutes later, Cahill is gone. The day continues downhill. A high-noon murder in the tourist district, the ransacked apartment of a local bartender, and the chance encounter of Abby Womack, Cahill's ex-mistress, combine to convince Alex that Zach Cahill's disappearance may be linked to all of these events. An overnight fire and a drive-by shooting the next morning amplify the strangeness and danger. By calling in favors from a crew of Key West characters, stepping aside of law enforcement, and traveling to New Orleans in an attempt to help his friend,...
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Alex Rutledge #6
Hawk Channel Chase
Tom Corcoran
Fans of Tom Corcoran's Alex Rutledge mysteries will enjoy this compelling sixth addition to the series. It is mid-October in tropical Key West, a break between the summer and winter tourist seasons. Alex Rutledge, home two days from an advertising job in the Bahamas, is asked to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. With few skills as a private eye and no desire to learn the trade, his decision to decline is easy. Until a close friend asks that he reconsider. A freelance photographer who loves beach scenery and easy schedules and who dreads his occasional law enforcement evidence work, Rutledge must confront the private investigator job with little but instinct to guide himself. Alex digs in only to regret every step, every fact that comes his way on the ocean and in the streets of Key West. To confuse matters, on his first day of the P. I. grind, a man is found dead in a neighboring home. At first considered a suspect, Alex later is asked to take crime scene photos with no body in place. Meanwhile a Lower Keys crime scene is closed to media and local police, open only to secretive federal agents. The questions and perils multiply. And there is still that young woman who never came home... Michael Connelly, author of The Lincoln Lawyer, The Brass Verdict and The Scarecrow, said of Corcoran's previous novel, Air Dance Iguana was the reading highlight of the year for me. With characters as strong and intriguing as the story they move through, I went cover to cover without coming up for air. Randy Wayne White, author of Black Widow and Deep Shadow, said, I finished Air Dance Iguana as the last of a Category Four hurricane pounded away at my house. This book has been storm-tested and proved impossible to put down in winds under seventy knots. Tom Corcoran and Alex Rutledge are Florida treasures. Jimmy Buffett, author of A Pirate Looks at Fifty and Swine Not? stated, Tom Corcoran has put his time on the water to great use. He reconnects my heart and brain to the Key West I knew. Steve Hamilton, author of The Hunting Wind, says, Tom Corcoran knows the human heart, sure as hell knows how to write a good book, and knows Key West-a setting so real you'll get a sunburn.About the AuthorTom Corcoran first moved to Florida in 1970. He has been a disc jockey, bartender, AAA travel counselor, U. S. Navy officer, screenwriter, freelance photographer, automotive magazine editor, computer graphic artist, and journalist. His photographs have appeared on seven Jimmy Buffett album covers. He co-wrote the Buffett hits, Cuban Crime of Passion, and Fins. His photos also have appeared on numerous book jackets, including those of Thomas McGuane (An Outside Chance), Winston Groom (Forrest Gump), and Florida novelists Les Standiford (Black Mountain and Last Train to Paradise) and James W. Hall (Hot Damn).
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